


With Something of Angelic Light

by prairiecrow



Series: Knight Rider 2000 AU [2]
Category: Knight Rider, Knight Rider 2000
Genre: Apocalypse, Friendship, Illusions, Love, Other, Revenge, Virtual Reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-14 06:11:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Virtual Reality, things are not always what they seem...</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Something of Angelic Light

This is not the Real: it is, rather, a virtually endless City with spires that soar into azure heavens adorned with thin clouds of purest white, and depths that plunge into nightmare shades of bloody black depravity. This is a place where the best and the worst of humankind is refined to its purest elements and celebrated, indulged, cultivated for the good of the species and inflicted on the hopelessly enthralled. This is a realm where the dreams of mortal men and women take on the sublime substance of Immortality, if only for a lost and desperate hour. 

For Shawn McCormick, implanted with a cranial chip, this electric landscape is even more immersive than it is for those not so augmented. She slips into it now as easily as a woman entering a marvellous dream and walks its streets with somewhat keener senses than the other ghosts who haunt this landscape, and she is always sharply alert, for patrolling the VR is part of the life of duty she's embraced since her augmentation.

And she does not walk alone. At her side strides an angel clothed in an illusion of humanity more deceptive than any other, his alien power masked by a sharp pale face and narrow eyes the color of a certain scanner that resolutely pierces the veils of the Real. Those with eyes to see in the VR always recoil from his aspect of slender maleness in shock once they perceive the blazing code that comprises his being: _AI_ , they whisper, and then, inevitably, _Thank God he's Asimoved! If he wasn't…_

Shawn knows how that sentence ends: _If he wasn't, he could take the VR apart like a Tinker toy._

And he has. But his aspect on that horrible night had been so savage and so terrible that the tightly composed simulacrum he now wears, the thin smiles and economical movements and precisely modulated speech, could never be mistaken for the creature that had laid waste to vast portions of the City with the merciless wrath of an unleashed God. Yes, his motivational matrix had been manipulated and twisted by an unethical hacker; yes, the anguish he'd felt when he'd been restored to his "right mind" had been all-consuming…

But Shawn knew, and Brad knew, that the relentless and ruthless force that KITT had become had been only a shift in emphasis, not in fundamental character. Vivienne had convinced the AI that the VR was an enemy threatening her and all she held dear, and KITT, coerced into absolutely loyalty to her cause, had acted in perfect accordance with his nature: Pragmatically. Efficiently. And above all, decisively. 

And the towers of the City had shattered to dust and flame at his touch.

That, as they say, was then. This is now: Shawn trusts him with her life, and more than that, with her sanity. She was able to bring him back from the reaches of lethal madness with a symbolic reinforcement of their connection, and she has no doubt that he would annihilate himself in an instant for her sake. She has no doubt that he needs her, profoundly inhuman though he is, and that the word "friendship" does not go nearly far enough. 

It certainly doesn't in her case, even though she knows that his purest form is a symphony of mathematical perfection that her merely mortal vision would despair of ever interpreting. So she embraces the parts she can comprehend — his arrogance, his stubbornness, his acerbic wit, his moments of nearly human gentleness, a lean face as white as snow and a shock of raven hair and a wry twist of eloquent lips meant only for her — and accepts the rest on faith, trusting that the one responsible for her salvation will never let her fall. 

She deliberately does not think of what will happen on some future day when the odds against her finally win their race, if KITT survives her death. But her own probability calculations cascade through her sleeping dreams, and she tosses restlessly in her lonely bed and clutches at shadows, closing her eyes more tightly against an irresistible vision of KITT's intricate mind bending but not breaking, and of a decision both coldly logical and fiercely passionate, and of the high places of mankind shuddering and falling once more.

And this time, she will not be there to banish the nightmare with true love's first kiss.

THE END

*********************************************************

She was a Phantom of delight  
When first she gleamed upon my sight;  
A lovely Apparition, sent  
To be a moment's ornament;  
Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;  
Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair;  
But all things else about her drawn  
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;  
A dancing Shape, an Image gay,  
To haunt, to startle, and waylay.

I saw her upon nearer view,  
A Spirit, yet a Woman too!  
Her household motions light and free,  
And steps of virgin-liberty;  
A countenance in which did meet  
Sweet records, promises as sweet;  
A Creature not too bright or good  
For human nature's daily food;  
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,  
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.

And now I see with eye serene  
The very pulse of the machine;  
A Being breathing thoughtful breath,  
A Traveller between life and death;  
The reason firm, the temperate will,  
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;  
A perfect Woman, nobly planned,  
To warn, to comfort, and command;  
And yet a Spirit still, and bright  
With something of angelic light.

_William Wordsworth, "She Was a Phantom of Delight", 1770-1850_


End file.
